Game Review: King of Tokyo!

Continuing on with our review of a selection of board games, this time we are picking up and having a look at King of Tokyo!

Raaawwwrrrrr!!

In King of Tokyo you are a Giga-Monster who whole purpose is to destroy tokyo before your opposing Giga-Monsters do. There is something every so satisfying about playing these roles and remembering the super cheesy movies of Japan being destroyed by a giant lizard, or a giant moth… or whatever it was that particular time!

The game is designed for 2-6 players and takes roughly 30 minutes for each game, mileage may vary per group and number of players. It is a mainly a dice rolling game with a couple of cards on the side. Everyone takes control of one of this mighty monsters and other than aesthetics and personal taste, there is no difference in whatever one you choose.

Gaarrrrgggghhhhrraaa!

Winning is simple. You either need to score 20 victory points or be the last one standing. You achieve 20 victory points by being in Tokyo and start mashing up the city. Only one monster can be in Tokyo at any time (unlike what the movies suggest!) and everyone else is classed as being outside Tokyo.

To be able to do anything, you need to roll the custom dice. The dice have a few symbols on them, there is the numbers 1, 2 and 3 which when kept give you that many victory points. there is the lightning symbol which is the way you can buy extra power up from cards, there is the heart which will help you restore life and finally the claw. If you are inside Tokyo and roll a claw you heart every single player outside Tokyo. If you are outside Tokyo – you hurt the monster IN Tokyo. The first person to roll a claw at the beginning of the game will be the first inside Tokyo. When a player is inside Tokyo and hit by a player outside Tokyo they can decide to either keep staying in, or swap with the player who just attacked them, which can give them a lot more room to work with. You can obviously re-roll dice twice before deciding to keep them, which gives you some leeway in what you want to select. Obviously when you are attacked you lose life depending on the number of claws rolled (1 claw  = 1 damage) and when you are out of health you are eliminated.

Finally, back to the currency. After you have completed your dice rolling and monster bashing, you have the option with the currency you picked up earlier to buy one of the three cards on show. These are usually some kind of power up that help make your monster bigger and scarier! You can also spend two to discard the current choices and get three brand new choices as well. These can really make a difference to winning and losing a game, so certainly don’t forget about them!

BARRAGGHSSHHHHAHHHahh?

The game itself looks absolutely amazing. I love the artwork, the quality of all the pieces you receive and the entire theme of this game. It is just a great deal of fun to play just for this reason alone! Add on top of that a game that is fun to play and you already have an excellent recipe here. You really feel that for the price you have paid you are certainly getting more than your money’s worth alone.

Don’t pick up this game however expecting a deep strategic game that will be full of thought and clever strategies. Pick this game up because it is light-hearted, involves monsters, is a fun game to play with your friends and looks absolutely brilliant. The only comment I have really against this game is that although they say the game is designed for 2-6, I would recommend on having at least 4 players to get the best you can out of the game. it still works with less than this number of players, but it is one of these games where the more players, the better it is.

You can buy King of Tokyo from Red Dice Games! Don’t get our 5% off code “nedice”!